Automation has undermined the traditional position of labor as much by

Question

Automation has undermined the traditional position of labor as much by robbing workers of the special Skills that were once their most important strength  than by the elimination of jobs .

(A) than by the elimination of jobs
(B) rather than by the elimination of a job
(C) than by eliminating jobs
(D) as by the elimination of a job
(E) as by eliminating jobs

DinoPen · Answer

I think the answer choice is D.
I was looking for the connection 'as much as'. In this case, the sentence had 'as much ....  as '. Hence, I went between D or E.
Looking at the sentence, I wanted to follow some parallel structure. Hence, when I saw 'position of labor' connect with 'elimination of jobs', I decided that D is the best choice.

philipssonicare · Answer

The above should follow the idiomatic structure:
X  as much by  Y  as by  Z

Eliminate A, B and C which do not follow the idiomatic structure.

(D) as by the elimination of a job
(E) as by eliminating jobs

These two choices lead us to look at parallelism. The prepositional phrase  of the special Skills that were once their most important strength  can be excised to simplify

Need parallelism with the -ing form. E

daagh · Answer

Ans E: E maintains the correct comparative idiomatic structure as ... as and the prepositional parallelism of 'by robbing workers' and 'by eliminating jobs'.

ann1111 · Answer

The correct answer is E. 
'as much.... as' is the right idiom. 
And the parallel elements are 'by  robbing  workers' & 'by  eliminating  jobs'. 'position of labor' is outside the idiom.

CrackverbalGMAT · Answer

This is an interesting question. If you have practiced enough of comparison questions, you can sense this error creeping up on you from a mile away!

So let’s get to the main point here in the underlined portion – the  idiom  being used here is  ‘as much by… as’.

This means that you can  eliminate options A, B and C  within seconds. This leaves us with Options D and E.

Now, these two options are testing the  parallelism  of two items – robbing and eliminating.

The non-underlined portion is  ‘by robbing’  – so the corresponding form for 'eliminate' is  ‘by eliminating’ . 
We can safely  eliminate Option D .

This leaves us with  Option E  which is  the best option .

Hope this helps!

kd1895 · Answer

Robbing...Eliminating.
Position isn’t related to eliminating, hence E and not D.

brianmontanaweb · Answer

A, B, and C do not follow the idiom "as much by robbing" as by Y

D is in the passive voice "the elimination of a job" and incorrectly says job instead of jobs when we have multiple workers

E follows the idiom "as much by robbing workers" as by eliminating jobs"

VerbalBot · Answer

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Automation has undermined the traditional position of labor as much by

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Automation has undermined the traditional position of labor as much by

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